Hampton man gets 25 years for raping Down Syndrome victim

Wed, 10/31/2012 - 11:17amJohn Munford

A Hampton man will serve 25 years in prison for raping a 24-year-old woman who suffers from Down Syndrome at a Fayetteville home one year ago.

William Jeffrey Dumas, of New Hope Road in Hampton, was sentenced Tuesday afternoon to the minimum penalty allowed by law, according to District Attorney Scott Ballard. He will have to serve all 25 years without parole, however.

The sentence was ordered by guest Superior Court Judge Christopher McFadden, who is a member of the Georgia Court of Appeals.

Ballard said he was disappointed the minimum sentence was chosen, because he thought the fact that the victim suffers from Down Syndrome was an aggravating factor in the case that called for a more significant penalty. Instead Ballard was hoping for life sentences on all three charges in the case.

Even after he gets out of prison, Dumas will serve the rest of his life on probation, Ballard said.

A Fayette County jury found Dumas guilty in September for two counts of rape and one count of aggravated sodomy relating to the case. The victim testified about the encounters and Dumas declined to testify in his own defense.

But some of Dumas’s words were used to convict him, as Ballard referenced how Dumas first told sheriff’s deputies that the victim had made similar accusations against someone else in the past. Ballard noted at trial that a sheriff’s detective tracked down that rumor, and it proved to be false.

“It’s all a big lie,” Ballard told the jury in his closing statement. “What do guilty people do? They lie.”

Through his attorney, Dumas denied the accusations and claimed they were untrue.

There was physical evidence in the case: the presence of Dumas’s semen on the sheet of a bed the victim slept on and also a doctor’s observation that an exam of the victim showed damage that was consistent with forcible sexual intercourse.

Defense attorney Chris Ramig argued that the semen stain got on the sheets sometime after they were last washed and changed two or three weeks prior to the alleged incidents.